While I did not agree with Senator Byrd on a lot of things, you have to admire the man for his tenacity and his understanding of the Senate rules (and his occasional twisting of them). Â Mitch McConnell actually said it well of Byrd:

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Byrd “combined a devotion to the U.S. Constitution with a deep learning of history to defend the interests of his state and the traditions of the Senate.”

“We will remember him for his fighter’s spirit, his abiding faith, and for the many times he recalled the Senate to its purposes,” McConnell said.

Byrd was old enough, for example, to have vowed memorably regarding the integration of the Armed Forces by President Truman that he would never fight “with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”

Even after his resignation from the Klan, Byrd continued to hold it in high esteem, writing to the Klan’s Imperial Wizard in 1946: “The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.”

And Byrd was old enough to have participated in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as to have voted against it after cloture along with 18 other Democrats — in the name of the Constitution, of course. Funny Stolberg didn’t invite Byrd to take a walk down memory lane on that subject. It would have been highly illuminating.

Oh how delicious is the irony that the death of a racist KKK member, Democrat Robert Byrd, D WV could scuttle the socialist aims of his 1/2 black Resident and his socialist Anti-American Party!

I am missing the significance of July 3. Is it that after that the election is pushed to 2012. The RNC had better well have their act together a blind, deaf and dumb 3rd grader would have known this day was coming, they had better be pushing for a special election NOW!

July 3 is important because WV law states that if a vacancy is declared AFTER that date, the Governor gets to appoint a Senator who will hold office until 2012.

If the vacancy is declared before that time, the Governor gets to appoint a Senator…but the election of a replacement takes place in 2010. This year.

Given that the Senate is in session at this moment, I think the Republicans have a strong case for bringing suit to force a declaration of a vacancy.

As far as Byrd goes, I’m with AJ. The irony was that until he went completely senile about 5 years ago, he was one of the preeminent defenders of Congressional perogatives in the Federal Government. And he was known for being free of the wholesale arrogance characteristic of the modern Left.

From JC Online via gateway pundit:
“Up to 1,000 jobs at Bucyrus International Inc. and its suppliers could be in jeopardy as the result of a decision by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, funded by Congress, to deny several hundred million dollars in loan guarantees to a coal-fired power plant and mine in India.

About 300 of those jobs are at the Bucyrus plant in South Milwaukee, where the company has 1,410 employees and its headquarters. The remaining jobs are spread across 13 states, including Illinois, Minnesota and Indiana.”

Anybody who thinks the oil drilling moratorium has anything to do with the explosion is naive or blind.

Do we need to connect anymore dots to see that this is financial destruction of America in order to implement socialism and feed the environmental cronies like Al Gore, imho?

If these clowns think they are going to get away with this, they have another thought coming.

Byrd was one of the great pork-barrellers of all time; a comment on another site called him the “Radar O’Reilly of the US Senate, sending the entire US government back home to ma, piece by piece.” Byrd set the standard for self-serving government that today’s clowns all imitate (he had a statue built of himself 50 years before his death!) Whatever else good or bad he might have done in his career and his life, the “shop until the public drops” attitude he helped foster in Congress has helped put the nation on the financial death watch where it sits today.

, “if the vacancy occurs less than two years and six months before the end of the term, the Governor appoints someone to fill the unexpired term and there is no election”

The WV law doesn’t say anything about when the vacancy is declared, it only says that “if it occurs, etc”.

The vacancy is deemed to occur when there is no Senator representing WV when the Senate is in session. That’s today, not later this week. If the Republicans can’t get that enforced then they deserve what they get.

Using the term ‘great’ American for a former leader of the kkk that only quit it for his political ambitions is a very liberal use of the word ‘great’.

“…Back in West Virginia, election officials hurriedly worked to clarify a murky succession law, ruling that it enables Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin to appoint a successor who will serve until a special election is held in November 2012…”

[…] of other polls came out that showed an enormous lead for the GOP in this fall’s elections. As I predicted on June 28th, when Senator Byrd passed away, his WV senate seat is now in play since the Mountaineers of WV […]